One in five Canadian high-school students mix booze with energy drinks, survey says

A new survey warns that mixing alcohol with caffeine-rich energy beverages is a trend that is continuing to rise in Canada, despite repeated warnings that the combination is unsafe.

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, canada.com

OTTAWA — One in five Canadian high-school students consume alcohol mixed with energy drinks, a new national survey has found.

The consumption of these mixed drinks, characterized by the researchers as “substantial” among high-schoolers, is an emerging public health concern that requires more effective strategies than “top-down, abstinence-based programs,” the study, published Tuesday in CMAJ Open, a new online journal of the Canadian Medical Association, states.

“At the policy level, this may take the form of a flat tax on energy drinks, or a variable tax reflective of caffeine content.”

Schools and community services could also adopt “innovative harm-reduction approaches,” with the help of social media, “to encourage youth not to mix alcohol with energy drinks, without directly focusing on the use of either substance, per se.”

The study added: “School and clinicians need to be aware of the extent of the consumption of alcohol mixed with energy drinks among Canadian youth and play a major role in educating and directing young people away from this potentially dangerous practice.”

Mixing caffeine, a stimulant, with a depressant like alcohol can mask impairment, and the practice of mixing the two has been associated in other studies with greater risk-taking, higher volumes of alcohol consumption in one sitting and increased risk of injury, the study notes.

The research team from Dalhousie University’s faculty of medicine used the nationally representative sample of over 36,000 students in grades 7 to 12 who participated in the Health Canada-funded Youth Smoking Survey of 2010-11. The survey, which does not include students living on Native reserves, the territories and the province of New Brunswick, asked respondents whether they had consumed mixed or premixed (sold in a bottle or can) alcohol with an energy drink in the past 12 months.

Overall, 21.5 per cent of male students and 18.5 per cent of female students reported mixing alcohol with energy drinks, for an average of about 20 per cent.

The study found “considerable” variation among provinces. Students in British Columbia (25.8 per cent) and Nova Scotia (25.6 per cent) reported the highest rates of consumption, followed by Newfoundland and Alberta, both with rates of less than 24 per cent.

Saskatchewan came in at around the national average, while Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island ranged with rates between 19 and 16 per cent.

The consumption of these drinks also varied considerably among certain groups of students, the study found.

For example, mixing alcohol with energy drinks was higher among students who were younger, had used marijuana, were frequently absent from school, were involved in sports and had more spending money.

So-called “protective” factors included performing well in school and reporting stronger feelings of school connectedness, the study found, noting it’s not surprising risk-taking behaviours were strongly associated with the use of alcohol mixed with energy drinks.

But there’s one caveat, the study found. “Participation in sports is often believed, perhaps incorrectly, to be preventive of risk-taking among young people, however, we found that participation in school sports increased the risk of consumption of alcohol mixed with energy drinks.”

The Canadian study follows the release last week of a U.S. report, showing the number of visits to hospital emergency rooms by people who had consumed energy drinks more than doubled from 2007 to 2011.

The visits to U.S. hospitals rose to 21,000, up from just over 10,000 four years earlier. Fifty-eight of the visits involved energy drinks alone, while the remaining involved mixing energy drinks with drugs or alcohol, the study by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found.

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